Guides · Catch-up pricing
Catch-up bookkeeping cost: how a blank stretch of books gets priced.
Catch-up means creating books for a period nobody kept, from bank, card, payroll and processor records. We charge one fixed fee for it inside our published $1,800–$6,000, set in writing before any work starts. This guide covers what moves the figure within that span, the documents each period needs, what a written quote should name, and how a filing date changes the order of the work but not its price.
These are our own published prices, not an average of other firms' rates. What your file costs is agreed after a free books review has counted it.
Quick answer
Count the months with nothing recorded, then the accounts in those months. One to three blank months on one or two accounts starts at the $1,800 floor. About a year across several accounts approaches $6,000. If payroll has to be recreated or statements reissued, the figure climbs. Past twelve months, the work becomes its own engagement.
$1,800–$6,000 is our published range for a one-time cleanup or catch-up; what it covers is set out on the pricing page. The service itself, and how each period gets created, is on the catch-up bookkeeping page.
Market context
What the market publishes.
Other providers publish catch-up terms of their own, and the ones that price a small backlog start in the hundreds of dollars. In their words:
- Etisson's pricing guide, dated April 30, 2026, says: "Catch-up bookkeeping typically costs about $300 to $500 for 1 to 3 months behind, $500 to $1,500 for 4 to 6 months, $1,500 to $3,500 for 7 to 12 months, and $3,500 to $8,000+ for more than a year. Actual cost depends on transactions, accounts, and data quality."
- SDO CPA's guide to catch-up costs, updated September 24, 2026, on its own rate: "SDO CPA charges $320 per month of history behind, or $299 per month of history when the books are clean enough for us to work from."
- Bench's catch-up page says: "Catch-up from January 2026 to the present is free with an annual subscription to Bench." If your books are on Bench now, see leaving Bench for your own QuickBooks file.
- Xenett's Pulse blog prices catch-up work by backlog: $300 to $800 for a 1 to 3 month low-complexity backlog, $800 to $2,000 for 3 to 6 months (moderate), $2,000 to $5,000 for 6 to 12 months (moderate to high) and $5,000 to $15,000+ for 12+ months (high complexity) (Xenett's post).
- Intuit's help article says of its Full Service bookkeeping: "If you have at least 2 months of data in QuickBooks, there’s a flat fee for cleanup and setup for the first month of service." The amount of that fee isn't published on the Intuit pages we checked.
Our own published range for a catch-up is $1,800–$6,000, so a one-to-three-month backlog costs more with us than the first rung of those ladders. The reason is the free review and the documented check that every cleanup and catch-up carries, set out in why our range starts at $1,800.
Checked: , each figure against the provider's page linked beside it.
What moves the figure
Six things that decide what a catch-up costs to do.
A catch-up fee is our estimate of the effort, fixed before we start so that an estimate that runs over is our problem rather than yours. Because nothing was recorded, there is less to investigate than in a cleanup and more to create: every deposit, payment, pay run and payout has to be posted, coded and tied to a statement for the first time.
That makes the arithmetic fairly visible: the statements to post and agree are the blank periods multiplied by the accounts, and all of them are done before a single report can be trusted. The calendar follows the same counts: typically two to eight weeks; the number of months in scope and the speed your statements come in decide where in that window it finishes.
Periods with nothing recorded
Each blank period is created from its statements, so this count sets the floor of the effort.
Accounts inside that stretch
Checking, savings, cards, loans and processors each add one more statement to post and agree for every period in scope.
Payroll to recreate
Each pay run goes in from the provider's register as gross wages, withholdings, employer taxes and net pay, with the liabilities cleared against the deposits made.
Processor payouts to split
A net deposit from a card processor or platform is taken apart into sales, fees and refunds from its payout report.
Records still to request
Reissued statements mostly stretch the timeline. They move the fee only when a period has to be reconstructed from secondary evidence instead.
Wrong periods mixed in
Periods that were posted badly need the investigative work of a bookkeeping cleanup. One fixed fee covers the blank and the wrong ones together.
Months behind
How far behind, and where that places a file in the range.
Placement only, not prices: each row shows where a file of that shape would sit against our published $1,800–$6,000, under the assumptions listed beneath the table.
Illustrative example — not client data. Assumptions stated.
| Months behind | Assumed accounts and extras | Where it sits against $1,800–$6,000 |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | One or two bank or card accounts, statements already on hand | At the $1,800 floor |
| 4–6 | Two or three accounts, payroll run through a provider | Lower part of the range |
| 7–12 | Three to five accounts, card-processor payouts to split | Upper part, approaching $6,000 |
| 13–24 | Any mix | Scoped as its own engagement after the free review |
| More than 24, or several entities | Any mix | Priced separately once we know what exists |
| No usable records for the period | Bank statements and source documents only | A reconstruction project, a different engagement |
- One business entity, with the accounts shown in each row.
- Nothing was recorded for those periods; wrongly posted ones add cleanup work on top.
- A statement exists, or can be reissued, for every account in every period.
- Transaction volume is ordinary for a business of that size.
- A real file's fee is agreed in writing once the free books review has counted it, not read off this table.
Documents checklist
The documents you'll need for each month behind.
Gathering these before the review is the part of the job you control. Print one copy per period, or work through the list once for the whole stretch.
Working template — fill in your own figures. Not client data.
Every month, for every account
- Checking and savings: the full monthly statement, opening and closing balance visible
- Each credit card: the statement for the cycle, with its closing date (it may not be the last day of the month)
- Loans and credit lines: the lender's statement, the loan agreement and its repayment schedule
- Any account opened or closed during the month, including ones nobody uses any more
If you run payroll
- The payroll register for each pay run: gross wages, withholdings, employer taxes and net pay
- The tax deposits and filings summary your payroll provider produced for the period
- Any payments made to workers outside the payroll system
If you take card or online payments
- The payout report from each processor or platform: gross sales, fees, refunds, chargebacks and reserves
- Marketplace settlement reports, and the daily sales report from your point-of-sale system if you use one
Sales, purchases and anything large
- Invoices issued in the month, or the sales report from your invoicing software
- Bills, vendor statements or financing paperwork for anything large, such as equipment or a vehicle
Once for the whole job
- The last tax return your CPA prepared, which anchors the starting balances
- Read-only access to the bank, card and payroll accounts, if you can grant it
Statements you still need to request
Banks and card issuers keep past statements and reissue them on request; the bank sets any fee. List the gaps so they can be requested together.
- Account and months missing:
- Account and months missing:
Notes that save a round of questions
- Any large deposit or payment that wasn't a sale or expense: a loan, an owner draw, an asset purchase
- The month where entries stopped, and anything already entered after it
Figure data as a table
| Question | Catch-up | Cleanup |
|---|---|---|
| The file for that stretch | Blank: nothing recorded | Full, but it can't be trusted |
| The work | Create each period from statements, code it, tie it out | Find each error, reverse it, re-prove the months around it |
| What sets the effort | Blank periods times accounts, plus payroll and payouts to recreate | Months and accounts, and above all how many entries are wrong |
| Published fee | $1,800–$6,000 once | $1,800–$6,000 once |
| Takes | Two to eight weeks | Two to eight weeks |
| Source: Everholt & Co. published ladder (pricing page) | ||
Build order
A deadline changes when the work lands, not what it costs.
Two ways to create the same books. Working oldest-first leaves the year your CPA or lender asked for until last; doing that year first gets it ready much sooner, and the older stretch follows.
How the work itself runs, step by step, is on the catch-up bookkeeping page. If you haven't decided whether to hand it over yet, what to do first when you're behind covers the first hour.
Extension or catch-up
A filing extension moves the due date, not the work behind it.
When the books are far behind, an extension can look like the fix. It answers a different question. We keep books and are not a CPA firm, so the extension decision stays with your CPA; what follows is only how it touches the books.
The date the filing is due
That's the whole of it from the books' side. Whether to request one, and what it means for any tax owed in the meantime, is your CPA's call. We don't advise on it.
The need for a full year of books
The preparer still works from books tied to statements. The blank periods are the same either way, so the scope and its fixed fee are the same too.
Room to sequence
A later filing date lets paperwork arrive in one batch while the periods the filing depends on still go first. Without one, the same work is simply ordered against the original date, with no rush fees either way.
Before anything starts, ask your CPA two things: which periods they need, and the date they need the books by. Those two answers set the order.
Another name for it
Retroactive bookkeeping is catch-up under a different label.
People search for retroactive bookkeeping, back bookkeeping or past-due bookkeeping when they mean the same job: recording today the transactions of periods that have already ended. It's catch-up bookkeeping, as our glossary defines the term, scoped and priced the same way, inside the same published range.
The word "retroactive" points at the one rule that matters. Every entry is dated when the money moved, not the day it was keyed, so each month's profit and loss shows what happened in that month and each month-end balance agrees with that month's statement. Entries lumped onto the day someone caught up produce books that total correctly and still misreport every period.
One situation needs a flag. If a tax filing already covers a period now being recorded retroactively, the new books may not match the figures on it. Whether anything filed should change is your CPA's decision; our part is books that show what happened, with a written note wherever they differ from what was filed.
Reading a quote
Six lines any catch-up quote should spell out.
Hold every quote to these, ours included, and ask whether its number is fixed or an hourly estimate. A figure without these lines is a guess with a price attached.
The first and last period covered
A cut-off at both ends, so it's clear which stretch the fee pays for and where monthly work would take over.
Every account, by name
Each checking and savings account, card, loan and processor. An account left off the list is an account left out of the work.
Who supplies which paperwork
The statements and reports you provide, the ones the firm requests on your behalf, and what a late batch does to the timeline.
What you receive at the end
For each period, a profit and loss, a balance sheet and a reconciliation report per account, so anyone can check the result.
What sits outside it
Tax returns, payroll filings and any amended return belong to your CPA or payroll provider, and the quote should say so plainly.
How a change is handled
If paperwork turns up that changes the scope, a revised written scope comes before the extra work, not after it.
Before the review
Five things that keep a catch-up quote lower.
None of them involve doing the bookkeeping yourself. Each one removes work we would otherwise have to price in.
Stop posting the old periods yourself
A half-finished period has to be checked line by line before it can be trusted, which turns creation into correction. Note where the books stopped and leave the rest untouched.
Send every statement at once
Every account, every period in scope, gathered with the checklist above. Paperwork that trickles in piece by piece stretches the calendar and breaks the order.
Export reports for the whole stretch
Ask each payroll provider and card processor for its register or payout report covering the whole date range. One export per provider beats a dozen small ones.
Get the due date from your CPA
Which periods the filing or lender needs, and by when. That sets the order and tells us which records to chase first.
Write a line on the odd items
A loan received, an owner contribution, a vehicle bought. A sentence now saves a round of questions later; routine spending needs no note.
Want the figure for your own books? The free books review counts the blank periods, the accounts in them and the records you have, then returns one fixed fee, scoped in writing.
FAQ · Updated October 2026
What owners ask about the price of catching up.
Periods recorded but wrong rather than blank? Those are priced as a cleanup: see what a bookkeeping cleanup costs. Once you're current, a monthly close with us keeps it that way; more reading in all guides.